The Port of Leixões situated 2.5 miles north of the Douro River mouth and within the proximity of Porto – the city of the Port Wine, has a strategic position on the Iberian Peninsula and is the appropriate place to welcome all passengers from the cruise liners.
Equipped with comfortable facilities for tourists (reception area, public telephone, toilets, an exhibition area, tourist office, post office, bank and money exchange), the Leixões Passenger Terminal is a wooden construction that resembles a ship’s hull, and is considered an important architectural and historical heritage. Other facilities such as taxis, bus, metro, hop-on/hopoff, shopping, restaurants are located nearby the pier area.
A new Cruise Terminal is being built at the Port of Leixões, with a new quay of 350m and 10m, for cruise ships up to 300m long, which significantly increases the capacity of the port to receive larger cruise vessels.
Porto is the birthplace of the Portuguese nationality. Its historical centre, recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, is a “Living Museum” of alleys and stonepaved roadways, bars and restaurants, open-air spaces and traditional cafés, where people of many walks of life and different arts and crafts meet, in a mixture of light, colour, scents and feelings of the past.
In a radius of an hour surrounding Leixões, other interesting cities and sites can be visited, such as, the Historical Centre of Guimarães, also classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO; the cities of Braga, Viana do Castelo, Ponte de Lima, Amarante or Aveiro; countless Manor Houses, Historic Hotels and Rural Guest Houses; the Douro Valley classified as the oldest wine region of the world, where Port wine is produced, has also been given the title of a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
Benefiting from a tourist hinterland with highinterest and distinctive attraction, from an excellent range of high quality and large capacity hotels, and located close to an international airport that serves the NW Peninsula to and from the main cities of Europe and the Americas, Porto region is a multifarious and diversified tourist destination that invites one to feel its history with eyes set on the future.
